EL TIGRE Eats SALSA, Wins The POWER PLAY
(Newport, RI)- J sailors all seemingly had an incredibly fun time participating in this year's Coastal Living SailNewport Regatta. However, even with best laid plans, the weather Gods simply didn't cooperate, throwing huge swells with little wind offshore and flat waters and not enough wind up Narragansett Bay...a very rare occurrence. Saturday saw a huge front pass over late in the afternoon that shifted the breeze from a light-moderate southerly to NW, canceling the last races of the day. By Sunday, an enormous High pressure system overlaid the New England region combined with a Low offshore spinning up monster swells to make everyone feel a bit "green" on the offshore courses and wishing for more wind everywhere else.Despite the daunting conditions the regatta manager, Brad Read (SailNewport Director), and the PROs on all three courses, including the redoubtable Robin Wallace and Kenny Legler, did an admirable job of pulling off a good set of races on Saturday, but had to live with canceled races on Sunday due to boiling hot conditions, billiard-table flat waters and a huge ebb tide flushing everyone out of the Bay and offshore.
Perhaps most impacted by the difficult conditions were the J/105s sailing the first of three events in their Narragansett Bay Championship Tour. Only two races were conducted on Saturday with Bruce Stone and Scott DeWeese's champion POWER PLAY (pictured here) from San Francisco, CA and Wickford, RI winning with a 2-2 record. Second was Chris and Carolyn Groobey's JAVA from Annapolis, MD with a 4-1 tally. Winning third in a three-way tie-breaker was local hero Nelson Weiderman from Wakefield, RI sailing KIMA to a 6-3 record; they beat Harald Edegran and Jeremy Henderson on CONUNDRUM from Ossining, NY with a 3-6 record and Joerg Esdorn and Duncan Hennes' KINSCEM from Katonah, NY with a 5-4 record for 4th and 5th, respectively.The 80s, too, only had two races and were suffering the "green" conditions offshore along with the J/24s. Not unexpectedly, the winner of the twenty-three boat J/80 class was a past North American and World Champion Glenn Darden racing EL TIGRE (pictured above) with a 1-2. Second was Kerry Klingler and Bob Miller sailing USA352 (another World Champion) with a 6-1. And, third was Will Welles sailing RASCAL with a 5-3 record. Rounding out the top five were Jeff Johnstone and Tom Kirk sailing LITTLE FEAT in fourth with a 3-7 and fifth was class aristocrat John Storck and family sailing RUMOR to a 7-4.
As predicted, sailing the J/24s is always a good test of going fast, mixed in with a bit of perseverance and a little lady-luck. While class leaders like Peter Levesque on MOOKIE, Charlie Enright on WATERLINE SYSTEMS and Tim Healey on QUANTUM NEWPORT having their fair share of ups-and-downs, Jens Hookanson sailed SALSA to a consistent 4-1 record to lead the pack. Staying out of trouble and getting second as their reward was Ted Winston sailing PASSAGE EAST to a 10-2 record, winning a tie-breaker with Mike Ingham on BRAIN CRAMP with an 8-4 tally. For more Coastal Living SailNewport Regatta sailing info.